Friday, May 16, 2025 at 12:00pm
Two Weekends of Music, Dance, Film, Lectures, Workshops and More!
Schedule of Events:
12pm - 1pm - Diane Chaplin Solo Cellist
Join us for a noon concert with world-class cellist Diane Chaplin as she plays a solo concert spanning her repertoire of music by Jewish composers, Klezmer and Jewish concert music and more!
Free/All Ages
About Diane Chaplin
Diane Chaplin is a world-class cellist and nurturing music educator who lives in Portland, Oregon. She appears often as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber music artist, and tours around the US as a featured member of the Portland Cello Project. For the 2024-25 season she is the Cello Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara; she also has a large class of private cello students, both in-person and on zoom, and teaches students all over the world through the Cello Refinery. Since the spring of 2020, Diane has been performing monthly livestream concerts of solo cello music, and has learned more than 250 pieces of solo repertoire during this time.
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7pm - 8:30pm - Shabbat with Congregation P'nai Or and PDX Nigun Circle
Join congregation P’nai Or's Kabbalat Shabbat Service along with Portland Nigun Circle to celebrate Shabbat with chanting, singing, live music, movement, meditation, storytelling and more.
Free/All Ages
P’nai Or (Faces of Light) celebrates the Divine reflected in everyone – LGBTQ+, interfaith, Jews by birth, Jews by choice. We are a vibrant, egalitarian congregation founded in 1991 by Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield, z"l. Our inspiration comes from Torah, Kabbalah, the teachings of the Chassidic masters, and Jewish and non-Jewish contemporary sources.
PDX Nigun Circle is a monthly gathering where we sing, socialize, and learn the beautiful history of Jewish mysticism as communicated through the art of the nigun. Participants are encouraged to bring a nigun to share if they know one.
PDX Nigun Circle is open to all! No Jew is too young, old, religious or secular to attend. While the art of nigun was started by and is kept alive by Hasidim, all can find strength and meaning through the practice. Most importantly, you do not need to consider yourself a good singer, let alone a singer at all! The nigun is an act of vocalizing the needs of the soul, so quality is not a factor in having a meaningful experience.
What is a nigun?
A nigun is a primarily wordless melody. Emerging out of the 18th century Ashkenazic mystical revival movement called Ḥasidut (Chassidism), nigunim (plural) have been passed down to us today through a long oral tradition. Nigunim are vocal outpourings of all the ranges of human emotion: joy, suffering, piety and yearning, and have carried the spirit of the Jewish people though generations of exile.
The nigun has the potential to uplift and transform the individual and communal experience of spirituality and the Jewish tradition. Nigunim are said to carry and evoke the spirit of their composers. While a nigun might emerge as a cry from the lonely heart, when we gather in song, we cultivate a sense of unity and belonging that feels ecstatic, vulnerable, nourishing and decidedly rebellious.
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